Dinner in the dark

Manama

Eat with your eyes first, it is said. But, what if you are blindfolded? A group of students has come up with a unique dinner event as part of an awareness campaign.  The "Dinner in the dark" event was organized to spread awareness about visual impairment and the difficulties it brings to those affected.

The youngsters, who are part of the Whitestick Project, which is affiliated to the student run organization AIESEC, invited guests to dine while blindfolded at a restaurant in Amwaj Islands.

Speaking to DT News, The White Stick Project Vice President Ahmed Muslim said that 25 students volunteered to organize the event. 

"We were sure this event would be as successful as the one we organised two years back. It was held in Golden Tulip Hotel and we had more guests for it than expected. This time too everything went as planned. About 65 people attended the event and we received a lot of good feedback from the guests," he said. 

Although the event was advertised just as a dinner, it had deeper social objectives. “We asked the guests to use their other senses while eating, so that they could experience the feeling of the visually impaired person. We put them in the shoes of the blind person.” she said.

Another objective of the event was to get the guests to interact with the visually impaired. For this, they invited the visually impaired people.

"Bahrain is a good place for these kinds of events because the people here are open minded. The guests interacted with the visually impaired and learned many things. Bahrainis as well as expats participated in the event. I hope that they learned a lot about blindness and other visual impairment. Our mission is to let the Bahraini society should be aware of the causes of visual impairment, its types and more importantly, the difficulties faced by those suffering. To achieve this, the society needs to interact with them and organizing these kinds of events are the best way." she said.